Focus: "From Little Things....

So, it's not rocket science I know - but when we continue to make better choices than we we would have previously, it's going to result in a better version of ourselves!

When we make premium choices, that's when the results are really evident - only a blind man could miss them! (and even then, he may be more perceptive than some men I know!)

So we don't have to be perfect. YAY!! Perfection is overrated anyway!

Just consistent.

Consistency is the name of the game with changing our health. The only way we can continue to consistently make better choices is to know our reason to change.

Why do we want better health?
Why do we want to be slimmer?
Why do we want more self-confidence?

I know these questions are fairly obvious, and are closely related to my posts from last week, but these are really important questions that we need to answer otherwise permanent success will always elude us.

When times get tough, if we don't have a reason as to why to make the better choice, it's easy to give in to the "If you can't beat 'em, join in" voice in our head!

So the challenge for this week is to find your purpose.  What are your answers for the above questions?  You don't have to tell anyone - though feel free to share if you like - and it's entirely dependent on how you feel - not what you think other people expect of you.

Happy soul searching.

Oh, and in case you don't know the rest of the post title - it's "Big Things Grow" (written by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody)

Focus: Relearning our approach to Food

This post is a little later this week partly because I don't like to write a post unless I have inspiration - waffling on is a speciality of mine in real life whereas I prefer my blog to be a little more poised, articulate and considered!

My aim is to inspire a change of health in others with a more holistic approach than most of us read about in the average health related newspaper article, magazine or diet book - on an intuitive level.

So after finishing watching the fantastic movie "Hungry For Change", it occurred to me that THIS film could be a great place to start for those who don't know where to begin relearning their approach to food. 

Although quite often we know what we should be doing, sometimes it takes a "kick up the butt" to move us into action.

Watching this movie may be just the "kick" that you need to propel you forward on your journey to better health and vibrant living!

This movie is free online until the 31st of March - make the most of it while it's available free - and share it with friends and family that you care about - it may not only change your life, but theirs as well!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" Mahatma Gandhi

Focus: Maintain Momentum!

In the process of my journey - I bought SO many books and magazines - they were literally piled around me. I read so many different theories on nutrition, magazines for improving running technique, gleaned other magazines for tips on designing workouts for particular reasons and so on. But NONE of this mattered if I didn't take what I learnt and then put it into action. 


Just knowing information doesn't mean that it will make us healthy. Quite often we know isn't working for us, and we also know what we generally should be doing - but we choose not to. We are making a decision at that point - to put our head in the sand. I know - I've done it myself so many times. 


It takes the recognition that we're not happy with our current state, and the realization that "if you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always get!" 


So if you are wanting a different outcome, or perhaps you've started making changes but you're struggling to keep it going - start finding a way to maintain a positive momentum of change. Look at your vision board, work on your passions, play your "theme song," do things that "satisfy your soul without compromising your goal" (my own little saying) - so baking a whole cake for yourself is out!    


These small things help to create a positive shift in your thinking which will hopefully lead you to make choices regarding your health that show appreciation for, and nurture, your body.


Start loving yourself more by making an effort to be less critical of yourself, and making choices that you know will nourish and care for your body, and you will be amazed at how this will help you keep moving towards a healthier and happier you. 



Are you feeling me? What is your gut reaction to this post? Let me know how you feel about this topic - I'd love to hear more thoughts!



Have a great week!  

What's your theme song?

So, I got to thinking this morning as I drove home from the school drop off.  
In an effort to find motivation to knuckle down and write another project that I'm working on, I put on one of my favourite positive songs - which wasn't quite the one I was looking for, but it helped lift my mood and made me remember that everything worth having requires hard work and nothing comes easy.


This made me wonder who else has a "theme song?" 


My theme songs change every now and then depending on the goals that I'm working on - for example I remember running a half marathon last May in preparation for a marathon later in the year. This event was a test - the time that I achieved would be used by my mad marathon buddies to calculate a predicted time for big run.


The whole time I was running I could see the 65 year old man who was a training buddy about 1km ahead of me! So I started repeating (in my head) "kick it up another notch" (from the song "Kick it Up" by The McClymonts) to remind me to push through the pain and keep going because before I know it - the race will be over and I wanted to know that I had put everything in.     


This was so powerful!! I didn't catch him - he came in at 1hr 37mins and I came in at 1hr 42! But I had shaved 16 minutes off my previous (and first) half marathon time and I was in the top 10 finishers for females!


As an interesting side note, apparently the man who smashed the then world record for men's 5000m race (Halle Gebrselassie of Eithiopia) said that he won by setting his pace to the beat of that old song from the 90's - "Scatman!"


My current "theme song" is "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield and "Astonishing" by the very talented Natalie Weiss - which I play regularly with my children in the car! These are just beautiful songs with such positive uplifting messages and as I feel like I have such BIG plans for my life - the what is obvious to me, but the how isn't quite apparent yet - so "Unwritten" seems like an obvious choice! Just hearing the song gets me inspired!  


So guess what I'm about to do?  Play my theme songs and write!


What's your "theme song?" I'd love to hear the song titles that you feel help you towards your goal!

Focus - Are you doing what you love?

Are you living a life full of passion? When you wake up in the morning do you have a spring in your step because you are inspired to get out of bed and make the most of your day?

Or do you feel like you're only half way there?

Do you have hidden desires to develop a skill, hone a craft, grow your own vegetables, write a book, travel, or develop your career? Dig down deep and tap into the you that you really desire to be. Find out what you really want to be known for, or labelled as, or having achieved - depending on what is important to you.  I always like to read other people's obituaries, and think about how I would like my own to read - which can sound quite morbid - but it helps me to work backwards and figure out the small steps that I can take everyday towards living the life I dream of. 

I felt like I was only halfway there, and I didn't really have any interests besides reading and food! (and at that stage, singing along to the radio - this was before I went back to uni!) Then I decided to start taking steps towards living a more authentic life - that is, one that truly reflected the person that I believed I could be. When I starting acting on this, it was amazing how much less I wanted to hang in the kitchen at night time!!

Instead of watching TV which was often accompanied by eating as a hobby - I started devoting some time each night after all of the children were in bed to researching my area of interest. Whether it be surfing the net, reading a book, writing down ideas or dreaming big! It was amazing how once I started planting the seeds, they started to grow.

I created a vision board of all of the things I wanted to get eventually and especially of outfits I wanted to wear when I felt fit and healthy! It was amazing to look back at it almost two years later and discover that a long time after looking at it, I had actually accumulated almost all of it and had achieved the picture of health in those pics!

Soon the life that I wanted began to evolve - on the inside and the out! I had started actively pursuing a different road - and it feels so good! 


Of course this is an example on a larger scale. Maybe there are small tweaks that you can make to your life to include some more time to pursue your passions - open your mind and you never know where the journey will take you!

This has a huge effect on your self-esteem and creating a positive outlook, which in turn changes the way you feel about yourself, your health and what you put in your body to nurture your health.

So this week - don't forget to
1. Keep being conscious of what your body is trying to tell you,
2. Create a new ritual - that hopefully replaces a time of the day where you normally choose foods that make you feel yuk!
3. Devote some time in your week to pursue your passions


Have a great week - and enjoy your journey!

Focus - Create a New Ritual

Happy Monday! I hope your week is off to a flying start!

So last week your focus was on how you feel after eating a number of different types of foods. No doubt some made you feel good, and some made you feel lousy!

While continuing to observe how you feel after eating different foods (and hopefully you've found that you naturally make different choices as a result of listening to your body rather than turning up the music and drowning out the noise in your head!) I want you to identify your weakest point in the day or week, where you tend to eat anything and everything in sight as a result of feeling stressed, anxious, run down or tired.

If you know it's a particular day (eg. Friday as you're out at sport until late after all day at work) then I want you to think about that day in advance and when you feel low in energy and why you think that is - tiredness or is it blood sugar related as you may not have eaten in the last 2-3 hours?

If it's tiredness, is there anyway that you can squeeze in some activity like a walk (nothing super high intensity - so no special clothes really required!) after school while waiting for children from various activities?

If it's blood sugar, can you make up a snack box the night before to take some of your feel-good foods in?

I often find that I get really hungry and tired around 3.30pm - 4.30pm, and I could easily curl up and go to sleep then and there. But if I have a snack, especially one that includes some protein like chicken strips, tuna or a good fat like a handful of almonds, my mind is sharp again and I'm raring to go!

Then dinner time on this kind of night is ALWAYS a killer! That's when the "stuff it - I'm going to eat whatever I want, and start again tomorrow" mindset can switch back into gear if we're not careful. So to prevent this - I have a plan.

I always plan to have Thai on Thursday night. The busiest day of my week! I love thai - and I where I used to go heavy on the rice, and not so much on the chicken, now I only order the chicken stirfy dish, and no rice - as I feel WAY better at bedtime when I don't have a gutful of gluggy rice to digest! Rice at lunch is different - but when associated with Thai - I could only ever have a mountain of it on my plate - no less!

But - my favourite ritual of all - is my nightly cup of tea after dinner. I rarely have dessert these days - if I do it's a piece of fruit - as this used to be my biggest weak spot. I could get through a day fine, but then eat a weeks worth of food after dinner! So, to give my mind a distraction from the fact that I'm choosing to eat light at night, I implemented my tea ritual.

To keep it interesting I choose different types of herbal tea - roasted dandelion blend (try the tea bags - but only with full cream milk - tastes eew without it!) is my favourite, but I've recently discovered dandelion chai from the health food shop, and a good old favourite is peppermint tea - which I almost always have if I had a heavy dinner as the peppermint aids with digestion. It's worth trying different brands of the same flavour until you find one you like.

I used to have a really pretty cup that broke, so I do need to replace that. Maybe i'll even get a nice new little pot just for the fun of it! It's just the ritual of having a cup of tea, after doing all the jobs, and I've had a shower that signals to me "aahh... it's switch off time!" which is super relaxing.
 Well, don't let this weeks task daunt you - or get too excited and try to be "perfect" every day. Just focus on those few key points in the week where you feel you could improve, and replace what you have been doing with a new ritual - like a snack box - or a chill out walk - or enjoy your nightly cup of tea!

Enjoy your journey!

Focus – Tune into your body

I hope you had a great day .... I did, but I'm glad it's getting toward the end of the week!

So here I go. Do you feel tired of being overweight but not sure where to start? Do you shove food in regardless of whether you are hungry or not? Do you struggle with fitting into the majority of your wardrobe but can't bring yourself to the point where you HAVE to go shopping for new clothes as

1. It's expensive and
2. It's demoralizing?

When I felt like this, I knew that I had to eat better, it's just that all of the "diets" looked like rabbit food.  How was I to adapt from my beautiful filling dinners of big bowls of spaghetti bolognaise (BIG bowls!) with a side of almost one whole garlic bread, and a glass or two of red wine, followed by a mammoth serving size of dessert? (which followed my bout of "trying to be good, eat a salad sandwich for lunch and nothing else for hours!)

It's hard to make such a dramatic change, and I wouldn't recommend it - the fact that it's so foreign means that you can't sustain it, and then you end up feeling worse - and so the negative spiral downwards continues!

How about we approach it from a positive angle? From a self-love angle? Like - I'm going to start thinking about my own needs more? Like I'm going to start taking care of me more - to help me be a more positive person?  Sounds good? 

Well, my aforementioned friend is starting an experiment with me, and I actually emailed her this information on Sunday night. She was feeling down, yet inspired, so I wanted to help!

So here is the deal. I don't want you to think of any of this as you are doing it to lose weight.
 
At the moment I just want you to make observations about how you feel when you eat certain foods

• when you eat them
• immediately after
• within a few hours
• then next day (for gauging your night time meal)
• it's effect on your digestive system and whether it is slow, quick, well-formed or loose (sorry it's so graphic, but it is important info - don't worry - you don't need to tell me!)
• whether your tongue is white and claggy in the morning when you wake up, or if it is pink and free of white coating

You might find it effective to write down what you ate, and then write observations down also.
 
I want you to particularly pay attention to how you feel after eating

• white bread (or related products like rolls, pizza, burgers, pasta)
• sweet foods (cakes/biscuits/muffins/muesli bars/orange juice)
• deep fried foods (especially hot chips)
• breakfast cereals
• processed salted deli meats or from packets at supermarket (e.g. ham, chicken, prosciutto, bacon, roast beef, pastrami, kabana, hot dog sausages, any sausages)

Last but not least -

• any protein foods that don't contain sugar (eggs, chicken, beef, cottage cheese, milk, cream cheese, natural yogurt)
• salad vegetables

For example - my observations about white bread and me - my mind is initially really clear, but within 5-10 minutes, I've crashed and I feel really foggy and tired, and I have to go to the loo!
This sounds really full on, but it doesn't have to be! Just eat what you normally eat and see how you feel. Write it down if you have a tendency to forget!

See if you feel

• satisfied or bloated or empty? 
• clear or foggy mind?
• calm or hyped?

I found that I was very detached from my body and treating it as my own "pleasure machine" without listening to how my body actually received it and if it liked it or not (if you know what I mean? that is - gave a positive or negative reaction)

I found that I ate regardless of how it reacted which is pretty disrespectful to my body when you think of it - if it was our pet or our car we wouldn't give them food or fuel that their systems reject or react negatively to, as we would feel guilty and upset for them, yet we disrespect ourselves in that way without even thinking twice as food has such a HUGE emotional attachment for us!

So for now, just start listening to your body again, and start the process of tuning in to what it is trying to tell you. 


Enjoy your journey.